2 weeks Ago By Nevin Martell
Brightwood Park is getting a new restaurant focusing on wild ingredients from the co-owner of Anxo Cider , Sam Fitz , 41, and his partner, Cerrissa Fitz , 39, along with 29-year-old executive chef Iulian Fortu . Poplar (the name is a nod to the native tulip poplar tree) started as sort of a joke. Fortu’s involvement stems from an off-the-cuff conversation about the space, where the previous tenants were going to open a pizzeria and had gone as far to install a pizza oven.
But since Sam Fitz is the director of operations for Brightwood Pizza down the block, he didn’t want to create a competing concept. “What would you make in a pizza oven if you weren’t allowed to make pizza?” Fitz remembers asking Fortu, who runs Arcadia Venture , which provides foraged ingredients to notable D.C.
restaurants such as The Dabney , Jônt , Oyster Oyster , and Reverie . Fortu has staged at Noma , cooked at District Winery , and has been offering private chef dinners for eight years. At Poplar he will be cooking serious and heady food that takes its culinary inspirations from diverse points—including Spanish and Italian cuisines—but will always focus on wild and seasonal ingredients.
“Most chefs create menus first, then find the ingredients,” he says. “I’m going to do the opposite. I’ll see what’s available, see what we have, see what is fermenting and getting ready, and create dishes that way.
It’s going to be very dynamic, changing week to week, day to day.” The menu will be mostly small plates along with a few large-format, family-style entrees. Although nothing is set, Fortu has made a few dishes for recent dinners he thinks are representative of what’s to come, including roasted badger flame beets with carrot romesco and honey-tamarind vinaigrette, roasted maitake mushrooms accompanied by pickled squash, and cheesecake featuring candied matsutake and candy cap mushrooms.
The overarching goal is to use everything possible and reduce waste, so the kitchen has a composting program, and Fortu will be doing lots of fermenting and preserving. Fortu is also currently helping design a small cocktail menu, including several zero-proof options using local botanicals and ingredients. The beverage menu will lean heavily in to local wines as well as special, small batch productions from Anxo, such as their new Vidal blanc, the cidery’s first wine, a skin-contact naturally fermented orange wine, and another new wine release made with Montmorency sour cherries.
“We really wanted to find something that spoke to what we’re doing food-wise,” says Cerrissa Fitz, who is Poplar’s owner and proprietor. “Since we are looking to predominantly focus on foraged goods and mushrooms, we wanted something that would be representative of something that thrived in our local forests.” The 1,000-square-foot corner space has just 24 seats, including six at the bar.
Cerrissa Fitz, an interior designer and owner of Piranha Design , a commercial and residential interior design studio operating since 2017, is cultivating a “modern Parisian vibe.” There are slabs of marble-like porcelain and brass shelving behind the bar, white oak floors, and mauve-colored walls. “I’m very particular and precise with my selections,” she says.
“I don’t like to just pick things off the shelf. I want something with history and a story behind it.” The goal is to create a spot that will shine for Brightwood Park residents.
“Like most of our neighbors, we dislike having to schlep downtown to eat and there aren’t too many places uptown where we can go out that give us the feeling that we actually left our neighborhood,” Cerrissa Fitz says. “We want to make you feel like you’re going downtown while staying uptown.” “And I’ve always been more interested in working in food and beverage establishments that are part of their local community, as opposed to places that look to draw from outside their community,” adds Sam Fitz, who is the restaurant’s director of operations.
“Brightwood Park doesn’t have a Metro and hasn’t been a destination for Washingtonians in decades. We love the community feel here. People know their neighbors and help each other out.
Whether you’re walking your dog, getting groceries, or taking kids to school, you see the same folks time and again.” Since the couple moved to the neighborhood in 2017, they’ve noticed improvements in the area. “Anxo became an anchor for Kennedy Street,” says Cerrissa Fitz.
“Foot traffic alone helped move open air drug markets further away from the community that we, along with all the other small business owners on the strip, were trying to create.” Poplar is currently open sporadically for classes (including this pig butchery tutorial ) and special dinners (like this mushroom dinner ). They aim to be fully operational in April.
Poplar, 701 Kennedy St. NW. instagram.
com/poplarkennedy ..
